Posted
by
samzenpus
on Sunday June 08, 2014 @10:00PM
from the better-and-better dept.

An anonymous reader writes "In a lull between product launches Tesla intends to keep making improvements to the Model S according to Elon Musk. Tesla will automatically push software to the Model S fleet that will help the car learn the driver's habits and the navigation system will offer directions to avoid traffic jams. 'This year, Tesla is offering only the single model, the Model S that is EPA rated at up to 265 miles on a single charge, the most of any electric car. The company's next model won't come until next year, when the delayed Model X crossover goes on sale. Musk says the holdup has centered on making sure its signature design element, gullwing doors to make it easier to get in the rear, works properly and is leak-proof. "Getting the door right is extremely difficult," he says.'"

While almost impossible to enforce, many studies show that driving for that long without a break is *dangerous*. Sure, you can come up with plenty of scenarios (more than one driver, etc.) but the use cases are rare enough to not be significant. It would still be impossible to have a break exactly where you wanted to (like stopping for gas and then parking by a nice lake for the rest/leg-stretching) but people would get used to it. I use my car so rarely there is no justification for having it but would def

Yep and it's a fair comparison too. Every other car company does this to. No sirree there's nothing unique about a car company releasing point updates to improve customer's vehicles after they bought them right?

Waze is owned by Google now, but it still uses some strange 3rd party text to speech library instead of Google's superior one. Google needs to start busting some heads and get them using the built functionality that Android has. Other than that minor gripe, I completely agree with you.

Only 1 word: OsmAnd. And the data is yours and remains yours. May not be as slick as the commerecial apps. But I use it exclusively on my business trips around Europe. And it works exceptionally well, considering it's open source.

The maps are completely useless where I live and fairly horribly inaccurate in places around where I live. Totally useless. $100 will get you a refurb or last-year's-model garmin with lifetime traffic and maps.

If they wanted to do something cool with the doors, they should have gone with electric sliding doors for all four doors. Front doors slide forward, back doors slide backwards. No worries about clearance above the car, or even next to the car, they seal correctly, they don't stop you from putting a roof-rack on it and because mini-vans have been using electric sliding doors for decades all the bugs have been engineered out years ago.

.Yes, but (this is crucial) SUV's and crossovers do not have sliding doors. The lack of sliding doors was a conscious, functional decision, where the function in question is "Get people to actually buy it."

A Chevy Tahoe is one of the few modern SUVs that don't fit what you are saying. They are still made on a full size truck chassis. So unless you're going to tell me Chevy Silverado Trucks have no off road capabilities, the Tahoe doesn't fit your rant.

The majority of other SUVs don't have the same kind of truck based chassis and are basically minivans.

Because this is a concern for a sports car, when most parking places are designed for vans.

or even next to the car

Gull-wing doors require less side clearance than standard doors.

they seal correctly

So do gull-wing doors, if closed with a proper path. This is the hard part, because the door system can't interfere with other systems, like the roof's roll supports. It's not an intractable problem, but it makes the overall engineering more difficult.

Because this is a concern for a sports car, when most parking places are designed for vans.

they don't stop you from putting a roof-rack on it

Also a big problem for sports cars, I'm sure.

Crossover SUV != sports car. They are bigger, taller and commonly used to carry bicycles, skis, and other sporting equipment on their roofs. Crossover SUV's are highly utilitarian which is very unlike sports cars.

Surprisingly, Tesla appears to be somewhat conservative with their 0-60 times. They claim 4.4s for the P85+ but Motor Trend tested it at 3.9s.The Roadster is still slightly quicker but it won't leave the P85+ in the dust and that's an impressive time for a 5,000 lb sport sedan

Manufacturers are often (usually?) conservative with their performance claims. Still, the " will beat the crap out of any combustion engine" is ignorant and easily shown to be false, even when narrowing "combustion engines" to production automobiles.

Comparing motorcyles and dragsters to heavy four-door sedans seems a bit disingenuous. There are electric motorcycles and dragsters. On the motorcycle front, how would your machine compare to the Mission RS (0-60 in less than 3 seconds)? Granted that the Mission costs a wee bit more than $6800.

There are quite a few sub-3 second motorcycles [wikipedia.org] on the market, and most can be had for less than $15,000. For the price of the Mission, one could purchase one of these faster motorcycles, and a nice Jetta TDI sedan as well - and still have enough left to buy a few years of gas and service.

Doing a bit more Googling, the current fastest production motorcycle in the world is the Lightning LS-128 -- an electric, and the bike, by the way that ran away with the Pike's Peak challenge last year (granted that air-breathing bikes are at a disadvantage at 14,000 feet). Top speed is 218 mph, 0-60 time is below two seconds.

However that's #1 for top speed. For raw acceleration the current champion (also electric) is the Killacycle. 0-60 in 0.97 seconds.

Gasoline motorcycle drag racing [wikipedia.org], well into the 5 second range. Electric motorcycle drag racing [wikipedia.org], more than a second behind and 40+ MPH slower. Electrics have quite a ways to go to be competitive - performance-wise - with gasoline powered vehicles. For production bikes, the Suzuki Hayabusa has several 200+ MPH (and a top speed of 245 MPH) runs, but Suzuki officially doesn't acknowledge them - for insurability reasons (here's one guy doing a 278+ MPH run [youtube.com]).

Yeah, introducing nitromethane-burning vehicles (I use the term loosely) whose fuel consumption is measured in gallons per second into a conversation about mass-produced consumer automobiles is pretty silly.

The definition of 'internal combustion' is that the pressures from the combustion gases cause the motion. (In external combustion engines, such as steam engines, the heat from the combustion goes through a heat exchanger and the working fluid on the other side of that does the work.)

In a rocket the exhaust gases push directly on the exhaust nozzle, and the interior of the combustion chamber and causes the motion, making it an internal combustion

Actually, most rockets would lose in acceleration to 60 MPH compared to a top fuel dragster. A top fuel dragster will do 0 to 100 MPH (160 kph) in 0.8 seconds, average somewhere between 4 and 5 Gs of acceleration for the entire run (the first quarter of the run at over 8 Gs of acceleration), and will cover the quarter mile in around 3.7 to 3.8 seconds. When you have upwards of 10,000 horsepower on-tap, and suck nitromethane (4 times the energy density of kerosene) at rates equivalent to a fuelly loaded 74

If he wants to be cool *and* revolutionary, he needs something more like this: http://www.disappearing-car-door.com [disappeari...r-door.com].
Granted, these look like they'd be a nightmare in a blizzard or freezing rain, but I'm sure there's some way to engineer a fix. Or, alternatively, they could just make the doors slide vertically. That would have a similar 'cool factor' to a gullwing, except with the advantage of no clearance space needed, and would avoid the potential issues found with the disappearing door. Only issue wou

I don't think it'd be that much of a problem. When you're rolling no snow accumulates on top. Opening doors in a driving rain or snow will cause problems regardless of type of door although it'll be worse with a gull wing. The whole point of gull wing is coolness over practicality anyway. If people want to be practical they can get a mini-van.

Regular doors don't do that because they open outwards away from the car's interior, and none of the roof moves away. It could definitely happen on the Toyota Sera.

Where on earth do you live? I'm in the lower Northeast, and rain and especially snow and dust indeed does get in the car when you open the doors - except the rear hatch - ironically the door most resembling the gullwing door. I mean, if only gullwing doors had this issue, we wouldn't need any other type of doors at all. Only the gullwings would allow anything outside the car, inside the car.

I guess you don't live in a snowy place? Opening regular doors does indeed drop snow from the roof into the car. Sometimes I remember to sweep the door seal off with a forearm, sometimes I don't. If I don't I need to remember to brush the seat off.

I guess you don't live in a snowy place? Opening regular doors does indeed drop snow from the roof into the car. Sometimes I remember to sweep the door seal off with a forearm, sometimes I don't. If I don't I need to remember to brush the seat off.

As long as it has regular front doors it's not that big a deal, open it the traditional way, grab snow brush/ice scrape, wipe off rest of car and then open the gull wings. If it was all gull wing, it'd be different as you could get a lot of snow blowing into the opening as it falls off the opening door or from the rest of the roof. It's not a good winter feature, but it's not a killer problem either assuming they can keep the seals closed and the doors don't freeze in the winter.

That doesn't happen in a Delorean. In fact if there's no wind you can sit with the doors open and they act as a shelter that prevents rain coming inside. The one thing that does drip is if there's lots of condensation on the inside of the door/window it drips onto the seat when you open the door.

"normal" car doors open all at once too. Not quite at the same rate, and the seal is much shorter, but the problem is still the same.

SOME of them do that. Most of them clearly do not. Look at the hinge to determine which your vehicle is, but most of them have just one pivot point. And so, in fact, the force being exerted to break the seal is extremely uneven.

Is the problem more of leverage and gravity? A normal door is basically balanced with respect to gravity and most of the opening force is away from the hinge. A gullwing door has to fight gravity and the opening force is closer to the hinge. I'm sure the gullwing has struts but the door would have to be open at least a little for them to work.

If my wife had let me buy that SLS Mercedes instead of a house I'd have more first hand experience.

Deloreans have a really strong torsion bar along the hinges of each door that do the majority of the work. The gas struts mostly just hold the doors up once they're open. The torsion bars are strong enough that if you unlatch the door, it just glides up on its own. I've handled one of those doors when detached from the car, and they are seriously heavy.

Is it me or is this a really stupid idea? Just making the doors gull wing prevents you from putting: luggage on top, ski racks, bike racks on roof, etc. You know, the kind of things people would do with an SUV or crossover...

Is it me or is this a really stupid idea? Just making the doors gull wing prevents you from putting: luggage on top, ski racks, bike racks on roof, etc. You know, the kind of things people would do with an SUV or crossover...

All those things would reduce the mileage on the vehicle. Maybe the gullwing doors are a clever plot to prevent people from ruining the aerodynamics, and thus the mileage, of the vehicle. Being electric this is a very important factor.

Their target market is the school run and people who like to be higher up while driving, not people who actually use an SUV for it's original purpose. There are lots of luxury SUVs like that on the market, which focus more on comfort and luxury than the utility aspect. The only time those people go off road is when they get a wheel on the pavement while trying to park.

When you travel as a group of several skier/snowboarder in the same car, the equippement don't necessarily all fit in the back's ski trap.You either have to pushdown one of the back seats (and lose one place for one gang member), or you put all the skis and snowboards on the roof (at a small mileage cost but you still have enough room for the whole team).

When you travel as a group of several skier/snowboarder in the same car, the equippement don't necessarily all fit in the back's ski trap.

If it doesn't fit four pairs, then it's shit. The car fits four people, the bag should fit four pairs of skis. Bikes are harder. You can't get more than two bicycles on the back of a car gracefully. If you manage to get four back there they'll stick out like a shopping cart.

"automatically push software to the Model S fleet" So, either my car does a software update while I'm doing 50mph or the home office needs to know at any given moment whether I'm driving or not. For a car I own, I'd prefer the option to do manual updates.

Or the car gets pushed an update file while you're doing 50mph, stores it for later, and installs it at some point when it's stopped and charging.

(Other options also include a polling mechanism where the car phones home for updated periodically when stopped, or a combination of the two where they push an "update is availible" flag, which signals the car to phone home and download/install it once it's stopped/charging).

They way it works in reality is the update gets pushed to the car whenver. The next time you get in the car it tells you that an update is available and warns you that you cannot use the car while the update is being installed. It then suggests that you update the car the next time it's plugged in at 2am (or something like that). You let it know if that's okay, or if you want to schedule for another time, or bug you later, or if you just don't want the update at all.

The updates are batched by Tesla so not all cars are updated at once. In case there's a problem with the new SW, that limits the number of affected vehicles.

Once the VIN has been tagged for update, the car downloads the new SW (over 3G or WIFI if available) and stores it locally. A prompt is shown on the main screen that new SW is available. Options are "install now" or "schedule install" (midnight is pre-selected), or "do not install now".

Elon Musk has said there will be a roof rack for skiis and other things (bikes, canoe?) not sure how he's going to pull that off.
He's also promised 400m batteries, self driving (entrance ramp to exit ramp), better seats, 4wd and of course the megafactory and a sub $40k car capable of 200m range. Oh and Mars missions.
Got to hand it to him, he doesn't think small.

It smacks of the big three in the 60s adding more and more chrome and fins to the same damned platform year after year. Model S is great. Now get cracking and sell me a 45K family sedan. Otherwise all the goodwill you have earned will evaporate like a gasoline spilled on the road in Mohave desert.

I don't understand why we keep following elon around like lost puppies when he really doesn't do anything for the average person.

Well, he's making a lot of advances in electric car technology and is dropping strong hints [bbc.co.uk] that he plans to share those with the rest of the industry on a fairly generous basis. Selling premium-priced cars to the rich is a good way to bankroll that - in 5-10 years time the rest of us may well be benefitting from this work. I can respect that.

What he hasn't done yet is created a compelling alternative to the gas-powered car. The Tesla has a very clear niche where it might be practical if cash were no object: private garages and long, regular commutes of 50-100 miles: long enough to make you want to travel in a luxurious car, short enough to fall comfortably within the Tesla's range, home-based so you can recharge overnight.

I'd be OK with that if the Tesla website didn't try and push things like economy (no, you're not going to save money unless you conveniently ignore the extra cost of the car - but if you have that sort of money why would you care?) and how easy it was to make a road trip (...just start driving, then have lunch at a supercharger! On the newly-localised British site this advice is followed by a map that shows no superchargers in the UK)

I think they're on the verge of getting there: make that mileage '250 miles minimum)' rather than 'up to 265 miles (unless you get stuck in slow traffic and need lights, heat or air con)' and have supercharger stations every 50 miles or so (otherwise your useful range gets reduced because you have to recharge early or detour to charge) and you might have a viable care replacement.

There's also a scaling issue with chargers: I was looking at (non-Tesla) chargers in the UK and, superficially, its not too bad. Look closer, however, and most of those stations only have 1 or 2 bays - often one slow and one fast (with different connectors). Arrive there and find the bay in use (with the owners off having lunch somewhere), or out-of-order, and you'd be stuffed. You'd have to be so cautious about how soon to recharge that it would decimate the useful range of an EV.

What he hasn't done yet is created a compelling alternative to the gas-powered car. The Tesla has a very clear niche where it might be practical if cash were no object: private garages and long, regular commutes of 50-100 miles: long enough to make you want to travel in a luxurious car, short enough to fall comfortably within the Tesla's range, home-based so you can recharge overnight.

Exactly. It's an executive car - but that's a good place to start. Advance the technology and make it available to the early adopters to get the ball rolling. The biggest single obstacle to making long-range electric cars available to the masses is the price of the battery pack. The reason a Nissan Leaf is relatively affordable is that it doesn't have the huge battery pack needed for long range.

Now that Tesla has taken care of building the cars, and the charger network is expanding, it's on to scaling up the battery production, and that's where the upcoming Tesla/Panasonic battery factories step in. Aside from reducing battery costs and increasing production for the cars, they should be useful as storage for charging stations as well.

I know there's a lot of impatience (I want my electric car NOW, and Superchargers on every corner!), but starting a car company from the ground up isn't easy, especially when you're taking over a century of auto industry tradition and standing it on its head. I'm glad to see the progress that's already been made, even if it's still a long time before I could afford to go electric.

America needs more businessmen like Elon Musk and fewer like Donald Trump.

When I buy my next car, however, I do know it will probably cost between $50K-$100K, and involve several weekends worth of Excel and making Pugh charts, because I don't drop that cash on a whim.

Strange. Although my annual income has less digits in it than yours, I've put by enough savings to easily drop ~$70k on a car without needing finance, yet I would only worry about running costs if it ran on single malt and was lubricated with white truffle oil, because it is completely bloody obvious that the running costs are trivial when you could get a pretty nice car for half the price, and insignificant c.f. the value a new car uses when it rolls of the forecourt (...actually the BMW i3 range extender